In the past two decades, there has seen a tremendous increase in the web. There were about 2.4 Million websites in 1998 and now there are approx 1.8 billion. More devices result in more users, more platforms and more browsers and eventually more ways in which your website can be viewed. Each browser gives support for an exceptional blend of web technologies, but along with it, there are drawbacks. Not all technologies are supported by all web browsers. Seamless user experience on one browser does not guarantee the same experience in each web browsers. Hence, it becomes extremely crucial that you test your website’s mettle on all the browsers. This is where cross-browser tests come into play.
If your website is not cross-browser compatible, your competitors will benefit from that! Yes!!
- 45% will be uncertain to visit your website again or they may never visit in future
- 32% of the users find your website problematic in one way or another are less likely to pay you for your service
- 35% of them will make a negative perception of your company
- Yet 21–22% of users will leave for good
What do we need to test?
A few factors that need to be tested while performing cross-browser testing are:
1) HTML or XHTML validation
2) CSS validation
3) All images and alignment and Font size validation
4) Page validations without and with JavaScript enabled
5) Ajax and JQeury functionality
6) Page styles in multiple resolutions
7) Footer and header sections
8) Special characters with HTML character encoding
11) Special characters with HTML character encoding
12) Date formats
13) Page zoom-out and zoom-in functionality
Knowing these factors, it is clear and understood why it is feasible to pick out the best cross-browser testing tool.
Top 5 Cross-Browser Testing Tools
To ensure that your websites will work for as many users as possible, here is the list of top 5 Cross Browser Testing tools:
1. BrowserStack
- BrowserStack test with real browsers on real machines that allow both software tester and developer to test websites and mobile apps.
- It is cloud-based and so it doesn’t necessitate any installation, the pre-installed developer tools are helpful for quick debugging and cross-browser tests.
- With this, you can conduct live testing and automated test on mobile devices and web-browsers. It supports opera mobile, Windows (XP, 7 and 8), Android, lion and mountain lion, iOS, OSX snow leopard, etc.
- Another feature is the native experience, where you can enjoy tests through the browsers with the help of DevTools.
2. Sauce Labs
- Sauce Labs is a prime cloud-based all-in-one framework to test your sites and mobile app=s across all major devices and browsers.
- Another trait that stands it out from the crowd is that it does not require any VM set up or maintenance for running the test cases.
- SauceLabs usually focuses on continuous tests to get instant feedback on your changes throughout the development process.
- It offers you the scalability, wide test coverage, and years of experience to accelerate the software test life cycle and decrease your build times.
3. CrossBrowser Testing
- The cross-browser testing tool provides interactive browser compatibility tests over the mobile as well as desktop browsers. It is available for multiple OS.
- It is a famous commercial cross-browser testing tool. It supports over 1000 amalgamation of different Operating Systems and browsers including mobile browsers.
- Their main trait comprises live tests (manual testing), visual testing (screenshots) and automated testing. This makes a great platform for designers, QA, and developers, to collaborate on test projects.
- Cross-browser testing has automated screenshot features, localhost support, and test behind logins among others.
4. Browsershots
- Browsershots is an open-source testing platform. It allows you to test sites in any browser and OS. This is an extensively used software testing tool because of its features and accessible customizations.
- One can easily run cross-browser compatibility testing with great customization choices like browser type, screen size, operating system, JavaScript status, color depth, and Flash enable or disable settings.
- This free browser test tool allows you to take site screen-shots in approximately 61 browsers and several operating systems.
- Supported browsers: Firefox, IE, Google Chrome, Minefield, Opera, Netscape, Safari, etc. with almost all versions.
5. LambdaTest
- LambdaTest is a cloud-based powerful cross-browser testing platform that allows you to carry out cross-browser compatibility tests of your web app or websites
- This tool allows you to test your website across a huge list of web-browsers and their respective versions. The specialty of this tool is that it provides both automated and manual cross-browser tests for your web app.
- LambdaTest tool is genuinely fast than the rest, especially with desktops, and they seem to concentrate more on customer satisfaction as their reaction to user problems is truly fast. It has clean UI and provides simple to use testing experience.
- Supported devices are Android, Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Web-based.
There are loads of cross-browser testing tools available like Browsershots, Browserling, IE tab, Multi-browser, BrowserEmAll, NetRendere, Litmus, etc. that help you to test the web application and mobile application (Android and iOS) for cross-browser compatibility. Choosing a good cross-browser test tool often depends on your need as each of these browser compatibility checking tools come with their own traits.
Want to share your experience with cross-browser testing tools? Please share in the comment section below. We would truly appreciate.
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